No Man’s Sky, A Bright Future or Lost In Space

We are back again. This time for a FULL review from 3 different views on the game. Check it out as Jason, Noel, and Troy give the low down on their experiences playing No Man’s Sky. Also check out some screenshots below during our adventures in space as well as some other in game shots. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Jason –

No Man’s Sky. It’s here…it’s finally here. After waiting literally years for one of the most anticipated games it’s here. But how is it? At the release of this article, you’ve probably already have read multiple articles and reviews. Some praising it and others bashing it. Maybe you already purchased the game, maybe you’ve already beaten it, well at least completed the story. I have not played nearly as much as many gamers but here is my fair assessment of the game so far.

When I started the game, I was dumped onto a planet that took joy in killing me. It was radioactive, the first creature had a dinosaur looking body, an alligator mouth, chicken legs and wanted to eat my face, it had the oddest looking plants…but it was beautiful. Everything was so epic and new. I wandered around looking at everything. What can I mine? What the hell do I do? My only hint from the game was to fix my ship, and I needed to walk about five minutes to where the mineral was. So I walked, yes walked, but I enjoyed every minute of it. There were crazy ass creatures, beautiful landscapes, and very large caves (which I got lost in) so the five minutes didn’t feel like five minutes. Noel, troy and I were all talking throughout the beginning of the game and we all had different experiences, but one thing was clear we all started off loving it.

To say this game is massive, is an understatement. The planets alone are each huge and could take hours exploring just to get the most out of each planet. There are benefits to taking your time to explore and the game rewards you. You find blueprints that allow you to craft better items or compounds so you do not have to purchase them with your Units (money), you find alien artifacts which will help you learn their language (They look similar to trash cans haha), monoliths which will ask you to do something (These are towering alien structures usually with more “language trash cans”. They show you something which you read in english then there is alien writing to the bottom. If you know any of the language some may be translated if not you have 50/50 chance to answer correctly. For example one had something trapped in ice which looked sown together. I didn’t have much of the language but I learned ‘caution’ and ‘abomination’. So I decided to leave it trapped, I was rewarded with new words and a blueprint.), if you scan all of the separate wildlife you will get a nice chunk of Units (I received 250,000 Units for finding them. PRO-TIP: If you need to scan a flying creature, ‘mine’ it. It will basically smolder and drop from the sky. Scan its body!), you’ll find outposts to be able to sell back all of the junk you’ve been gathering as well. You can also find beacons. If you craft and drop a bypass chip, in it you can choose a waypoint of something you like to find next, such as a monolith or outpost. I really enjoyed this part, it did get a little repetitive but rewards of blueprints or more language to unlock kept me driving forward…and that’s before you even leave the atmosphere.

In space, again the scale is unreal. Lately the systems I’ve been around have been with four planets each different and a space station. The space station will allow you to sell goods, chat with an alien, or purchase ships that are also in the hanger. You can also get attacked by space pirates on occasion, but they usually aren’t too hard in the beginning. But there really isn’t much more to do. (Again, at the point I am at in the game).

I really do enjoy this game and am still having fun with it. But there are some issues and or things that bummed me out throughout my play of it so far:

The lack of an actual multiplayer hurts my heart. It would be so awesome to be able to team up and gather minerals like in Minecraft, or go team up on some space pirates, but alas it is nowhere to be seen. Hopefully in the future sometime.

The game also doesn’t explain things well. Like how to upload your creatures and planets to the database. There are a large number of players that did not upload their findings on the first planet.

The games flow is confusing. The game ‘quest’ tell you to fuel your warp drive, get into space, and warp to another system. It forces you ahead in the story but if you do that quickly you’ll miss out on a ton of exploration. Granted you can always go back, but with so many planets I decided to just forge ahead and make sure I completed what I wanted on each planet before jumping to the next.

Technically bugs are there, at lot less it seems than at launch but they are still there. Floating objects and clipping occurs minimally and doesn’t ruin anything. On my first warp jump though I was so excited. Gathered everything I needed and I was about to travel to the next system. I pulled up the map, found the system, hit ‘X’, and……CRASH. The game completely closed and brought me to the PS4 home screen. I was so deflated I just stopped for the night.

The price. Again I am enjoying myself in this game but a $60 game like this without multiplayer is a bit rough. There are minor issues here and there. There are no major characters to build an actual epic story. I feel this price a bit steep for it.

Overall, if you enjoy exploring, gathering, researching, and dedicating time to it (think Minecraft) you’re going to enjoy playing this game. If you just want to play through it expecting a grand story and not wanting to grind out a mountain of Emeril, then this game is not for you. I do recommend playing it if you are the at least a bit curious about it. Sean Murray has said through twitter they are working on some major bugs and issues players are having before adding new features. So new things are coming. Hopefully some richer storyline and MULTIPLAYER, feeling alone in the game is constantly there. But who knows where this game will go, I’m hoping for some fun updates in the future. As of now, the hype surpassed the game, and it will take a bit to regain some of the trust of those upset about the game. As for me, I have to get back to this mountain of Emeril because daddy needs a new spaceship. I’d give it a B-, but does have some improving to do to keep people around.

Noel –

No Man’s Sky is one of those games that you really have to be able to enter without any real expectations. While being a really amazing exploration game, some feel that it lacks quite a bit.

No Man’s Sky is a game that takes patience and wont necessary shock and awe you right from the get go. With that said, it’s a great game that has the ability to pick it up, leave it and then pick it up again without having to complete some crazy hard objective or mission before you can safely walk away from it with a solid save point.

Looking at a pro’s and con’s angle of the game, there are some of both for sure. While exploration is a great pro being that all the planets are different in their own way with atmosphere making it a new challenge to find ways to stay alive, all the materials that can be gathered, as well as the objectives are for the most part equally the same on each. This creates a bit of repetitiveness that can get boring pretty quick.

When asked if No Man’s Sky is multiplayer, the short answer is yes. The longer answer is that you will never see each other because the universe is so large (totaling a massive 18 quintillion planets to discover). One big enjoyment I get out of the game is talking with other friends about their discoveries. I have noticed that each is different.

The economic structure in No Man’s Sky is also something to admire. Based on the materials you collect, you may not want to sell just yet. Depending on what system you have entered and what vendor you go to, those rare or even common items may be worth a lot more than what you expect. I spent about 1-2 hours farming some Emeril material and was able to turn my haul into about 1.2 Million Units worth of value, which the helped me turn around and upgrade to a better ship. 2 big tips for the game would be to upgrade your ship as quick as possible, and upgrade the scanning ability on your gun (aka toolkit). With a stronger ship and larger scan area for your toolkit, you will be able to collect material easier making it a lot quicker to craft new items and an upgraded ship will keep you alive a lot longer when you get raided and attacked by other ships that want all your hard earned units (aka in game currency).

Final thoughts would be that No Man’s Sky is a really great game. It has a different gameplay style that some gamers may not be accustomed to. One that takes patience, but rewards greatly. Now the only thing to wait out will be to see if rumors are to be proven true in that VR Support will be added in the sometime near future. Hello Games has expressed interest in adding it, but not officially confirmed.

Troy –

After spending a ton of time with No Man’s Sky I feel like I’m starting to hit the bottom of the barrel. While I like NMS, there does seem to be a wall, I feel like I’ve done almost everything the game has to offer and the only thing left is to get to the center of the galaxy to see the ending of the “story” which is almost non existent. Most of the plot is told through alien dialogue that you don’t know until you’ve learned it but you only learn ONE word at a time. You meet an alien race that super important to the plot but in the entire time I’ve played I think I only learned 2 words…and this guy didn’t use either so I have no clue whats going on. Thats one thing I would change, learn multiple words in one shot, else it just feels like padding. So I have no clue why I’m doing what I’m doing just that I have to get to the center of the galaxy because that’s where my map says to go.

NMS is technically impressive in what it’s done. The whole procedurally generated stuff makes for some interesting events to happen. I landed on a planet with a race of creatures that looked like the bouncing head of Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars, another I found a race of large tortoise aka Bowser like creatures, and on one, I was attacked by a sentient pineapple (Psych would be proud). The ships are cool looking and you feel like a semi bad ass running back to your sleek fighter, but there is no difference in ship design other than how much room (slots) its has, I’m just as adept at shooting down pirates (when they bother to show up) in a flying grain silo as I am in my multi wing fighter (it looks like an asterix wing).

After awhile you start to notice the sameness of it all. I had ADD, which makes it hard for me to sit down with games like Minecraft and the such, and while this game has kept my attention longer than I thought it could, Im noticing and starting to get bored with the monotony. I highly recommend bringing some sort of audio book, podcast, Pandora type streaming to listen to while you do stuff, there isn’t really a soundtrack to speak of and what there is is really bland.

On the PS4 there is some problems with pop in rezzing and “dithering” with the landscape on planets, you’ll be flying looking for a resource and not see anything, loop around cause you thought you saw a building and all of a sudden 4 resource nodes will just pop into view. Which I sorta expected with a game of this magnitude. There have been reports of continuous crashing and bugs, I myself couldn’t go an hour with out the game crashing, the recent patch fixed most of the crashes but I still get one every once in awhile, one bad crash I had to reboot my whole PS4 as it locked up. There’s a slight hiccup when you’re flying around, you will hit an invisible wall and drop to 0 speed and just hover there, it’s a little annoying. Also when you take off sometimes the game will throw you out into orbit for no reason.

Overall, I feel like NMS is a showcase, a tech demo, a shell of something greater, something is missing from the game to make it great, it could have been so much more, right now it’s just “alright” with that veneer slowing wearing away to being “boring”. Even with VR support rumored to be in development for it, I don’t know how much more interesting starting at a block of Emeril or Aluminum for 5min of mining will be in VR as opposed to just staring at my screen. If you like games like Minecraft where the monotony of resource gathering doesn’t bother you, it’s a great distraction or one of those games you just play to relax or if you wanna catch up on some podcasts. If I had to rate it, C-.

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Fun and Easygoing Gameplay
Different Gameplay Style Then Some Are Used To
Different Experience For Each Player

Negatives

High price point ($60)
Recent Reports Of Crashes And Bugs
Repetitive Gameplay at times

Editor Rating

Gameplay

B

Graphics

B+

Story

C

Replay Value

C

Total Score

B-

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User Rating

Gameplay

B+

Graphics

A-

Story

D+

Replay Value

C+

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Bottom Line

If you enjoy exploring, gathering, researching, and dedicating time to it (think Minecraft) you’re going to enjoy playing this game. If you just want to play through it expecting a grand story and not wanting to grind out a mountain of Emeril, then this game is not for you.

Sean Murray has said through twitter they are working on some major bugs and issues players are having before adding new features. So new things are coming. We are Hoping for some richer storyline and true MULTIPLAYER.